The Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) police crossed a red line by issuing verbal summons to journalists of national dailies — including the HT correspondent in Srinagar — over a news report on the administration’s move to profile mosques and imams in the Kashmir Valley in the wake of the November 10 Red Fort blast. HT has asked its reporter to ignore a verbal summons, and sought a written one, listing the reasons for the summons.
The police function under immense
The Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) police crossed a red line by issuing verbal summons to journalists of national dailies — including the HT correspondent in Srinagar — over a news report on the administration’s move to profile mosques and imams in the Kashmir Valley in the wake of the November 10 Red Fort blast. HT has asked its reporter to ignore a verbal summons, and sought a written one, listing the reasons for the summons.
The police function under immense stress in J&K, a region that has been a hotbed of cross-border terrorism. That, however, is no excuse to intimidate journalists, who are mere messengers of news, both good and bad. Newspapers are not an extension of the government, and have no obligation to toe the government’s narrative on the state of J&K. Their responsibility is to tell the truth, however inconvenient it may be to the administration, in the fairest possible manner; and their accountability is to its readers. Journalists in J&K have been in the crosswires of terror groups and have lost many colleagues to guns and bombs during the militancy years.
The police highhandedness in Srinagar is, at best, a clumsy effort to control the narrative, and, at worst, an attempt to frighten reporters and stop reportage that shows the administration in poor light. Neither makes sense. Representatives of the Union government, including the Prime Minister and the home minister have repeatedly emphasised the importance of integrating the region with the rest of the country, rebuilding institutions that have passed through a long and torturous winter of fear and chaos, reviving the democratic process, and promoting civic, social, and economic activities. Moves seeking to curb factual reporting work against all those objectives.
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